The Ethereum Foundation announced the establishment of the EPF (Ethereum Protocol Fellowship) research group. EPF aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers interested in the core protocol. The EPF research group lasts for 10 weeks (February 19th to April 29th) and is intended to serve as the precursor to the Ethereum EPF. The EPF group aims to mentor and educate the next generation of Ethereum core developers and provide in-depth knowledge of Ethereum’s internal mechanisms. Topics explored by the research team include protocol design, execution and consensus layer architecture, specification and implementation, testing methods and tools, and current research and roadmap projects.